Charity in the European Empires, 1500-1750: a Comparative Sketch"

"Charity in the European Empires, 1500-1750: a Comparative Sketch"

Isabel dos Guimaraes Sá

In the account of his voyage to Africa and South America from 1695 to 1697, the French engineer

François Froger wrote:

"I knew one [slave owner] living in Martinico, who being of a compassionate Nature, could not find in his heart to cut off his Slave's Leg, who had run away four or five times, but to the end he might not again run the risque of losing him altogether, he bethought himself of fastening a Chain to his neck, which triling down backwards, catches up his leg behind, as main be seen by the cut: And this, in the space of two or three years, does so contract the nerves, that it would be impossible for this slave to make use of his leg.

And thus, without running the Hazard of this unhappy wretch's death, and without doing him any mischief, he thereby deprived him of the means to make his escapei."

This excerpt, albeit short, includes the features we commonly associate with Empire: possession and dispossession of local or imported populations. In this context of indifference towards suffering caused to others, the words "compassionate nature" strike the modern reader as outrageous, and claim further analysis. My work will try to discuss, albeit tentatively, the discourses on charity to be found in the different Western Empires and the way they reflect on charitable action.

The magnitude of comparison makes me well aware of the risks I am taking, and the only reason I dare to give this paper before an audience of experts is because it is the most likely to give me back some useful criticisms. I also would like to state, if this excuses me of any pretensions, that this research is still in its first stage, and so, this is the most crucial moment to listen to suggestions.

I am concerned with organizational features that belong to religious cultures of charity and so, my main departing point will be Europe. Here I do not consider Europe in its various kingdoms or other political units that gave origin to Overseas Empires, but as divided according to the religious Reformations

1 that take place during the sixteenth century. In recent years, historiography on charity has rediscovered the centrality of religious beliefs in the framing of charitable practices. Authors such as Carter Lindberg, Ole

Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham have tried to add a different perspective to the works of the seventies by authors such as Natalie Zemon Davies or Brian Pullan. These claimed that differences between

Catholics and Protestants were not that striking concerning their practices of charityii. Even more recently, some authors have pointed out the pervading notions of community in the shaping of charitable action. I am referring to the volume With Us Always. A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare edited by

Donald T. Critchow and Charles H. Parkeriii, which takes further the "religious approach" I referred to previously. It is precisely the "community approach" that I want to follow here: how ideas of who belongs or not to the community decide who gets help and who is not entitled to it in colonial societies, who, by definition, mix different populations to different degrees. I will try to explore the main obsessions that pervade discourses on charity as I can detect them in travel accounts and other non-serial sources. In so doing, I do not mean that such obsessions are unique to a particular Empire, only that they are more frequent in some of them than others.

Before I proceed I would like to say a word about the sources I chose to work on and the way I used them. I read travel accounts precisely because of their unreliable nature. Authors observe foreign lands and peoples according to their cognitive models: it is not what those travelers saw that interests me, but how they interpreted "evidence" and transmitted it to the implied reader. They were reporting on other cultures (in this case I used Europeans describing spaces transformed by European presence) and in most cases translating themselves and not the objects of their remarks. Travel accounts provide a diversity that few historical sources are liable to create: multiple cross views of different objects. They form a privileged view point to observe differences within European cultures at work in alien lands in a competitive framework. These voyagers were agents of Empire, trying to amass new riches and territories to their sovereigns (and often also to themselves) at the expense of other Europeans. Remarks about charity participate in such competition: travelers use charity as testimony to the humanity or lack of it of their competitors. So, my trust in travel accounts as historical sources derives precisely from their unreliability as texts describing "reality".

2 Charity according to religion: the Protestant challenge

The basic principles of charity in the West are stated in the Bible, namely in the New Testament.

The Gospel of Matthew in its chapter 25 describes the Final Judgement in what is to be one of the most influential texts concerning charity. The Lord is to separate the good from the bad, like a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, goats on the left and sheep on the right.

34 "Then shall the king say to them on his right hand: Come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

35 for I was hungry and you gave me meat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in;

36 naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me".

This text was the basis for the seven corporal works of mercy defined in the Late Middle Ages to which the seven spiritual works of mercy were added: altogether, these fourteen precepts were to supply

Christians with a vocabulary for the practices of charity. Ever since, at least in the Catholic countries, the works of mercy formed a part of doctrine and catechism, just as the commandments or the mortal sins.

Because charity was contiguous to salvation in the New Testament, it was to acquire a dual nature that mirrored the existing binary concept of what we call today a human being, as formed of an inferior and devaluated part (the body) and a higher one (the soul). That is why we will find in many institutions of charity a concern with purifying the souls rather than caring for bodies. Bodies were the ephemeral prisons of the soul, creating perpetual obstacles to its salvation. In this understanding of charity, there was a strong emphasis on the redemptive power of almsgiving: alms erase sins like water extinguishes fire (these metaphors are from the Ecclesiasticus, 3: 30). Of course, not all peoples in Europe had a strong belief in the properties of almsgiving: we can detect a very strong méfaisance towards beggars even before Luther advocated a close control upon begging and almsgiving. Central European best-sellers casting doubt on the true poverty of beggars like the Narrenschif (Ship of fools), first published in 1494, enjoyed successive translations and publications until the end of the Thirty Years Wariv; even in areas later to abide to the

Roman Church, opinions concerning almsgiving varied among theologists. Despise for beggars explains

3 why Luther was to write a preface for the Liber Vagatorum in 1528 exhorting Christian princes and common men to keep a close eye on false beggars. The book was intended as a dictionary of words used by treacherous beggars and thus had the purpose of teaching rightful Christians how to avoid being wronged.

Luther states: "Truly, such Beggar's Cant has come from the Jews, for many Hebrew words occur in the

Vocabulary, as any one who understands that language may perceive."v So, in his mind, false beggars used

Hebrew words: Luther did not merely intend to unmask them; he was also drawing the boundaries of community.

Protestantism would undermine some of the beliefs central to the practices of Late Medieval charity: no belief in the Purgatory and thus no masses for the dead; no belief in transubstantion and thus no sacrificial character of the mass; no confession and thus no forgiving of sins. If Catholics continued to view charity as concerned with the living and the dead, bequeathing lavishly to the post-mortem care of their own souls, Protestants kept to practices of charity strongly anchored in the realm of the living. For any Protestant Church, charity was not about eternal salvation but about being a worthy Christian obliging to the duties towards his or her neighborvi. On the other hand, although in theory the Protestant churches would be open to all and proselytism encouraged, the notions of community were in practice much more restrictive. Protestant areas kept to the ideal of eliminating almsgiving and thus vagrancy, concerns we can find either in Luther, the English Poor Laws or the Calvinist diaconates. Charity was more and more concerned about the inward communities, and recent studies suggest that, in cities with multiple religious communities, the tendency was to practice denominational charity instead of more encompassing civic charityvii. On result of the suspicion concerning private almsgiving (that was largely derived from criticism to voluntary poverty of mendicant orders) the emphasis on work became a particular feature of Protestant charity: the poor were to be provided with the means to earn their living and avoid the help of others. This concern was not of course exclusive to Protestant areas, and attempts were made to set the poor to work in

Catholic countries: but nowhere was it as recurrent as in the former. If practices of charity in Protestant areas could be fragmented into different religious communities, Catholics developed a concern about incorporating others into their Church: imperial enterprise had Christianization as a strong concern and charity was modeled on the inclusion / exclusion of others according to their baptism status. Nevertheless,

4 as we shall see later on, natives or slaves, in spite of their christianization, were not considered as equals in what concerns access to resources and institutions of charity. In this context, the importance of charity as a boundary-making device (obviously among other discriminative practices) is particularly relevant to the shaping of ideas of community and to the construction of levels of integration or exclusion. The members of Catholic Church formed a broad category of people deserving compassion or mercy. Since charity was concerned with works of mercy that would contribute to the salvation of social actors, I should like to concentrate now on the various meanings of the word mercy. It can mean the mercy of God towards sinners; it can also be synonym of compassion towards your neighbor (in the Christian sense of the latter word), but it can also apply to the limits of warfare. The social experience of mercy (and also the divine one) presupposes inequality: one is merciful of one's enemies after having defeated them. So mercy is a concept that can also apply to the limits of warfare: it is concerned with the harm you can actually cause your defeated enemies.

I came across a pamphlet published in Seville in 1571 celebrating the massacre perpetrated by the

Spaniards on the Huguenot colony of Florida lead by Jean Ribaultviii. In this text, written in verse and illustrated, the concept of mercy was tied to military victory: God had been merciful to Spaniards because he had allowed them to eradicate the Lutherans (that's how they called the Huguenots). In this case mercy could not even be applied to the limits of warfare, because Spaniards were fighting heretics. These were not thought worthy of mercy, not only because war presupposes the denial of the humanity of our enemies, but also because religious choices eradicated them out of the Catholic community. So, the boundaries of compassion among Catholics went as far as their Church was concerned: in the Catholic empires, charity extended to natives, imported slaves or heretic Europeans in the measure that they willing to incorporate the Catholic Church as baptized members. No Portuguese, Spanish or French hospital in their respective colonies was willing to care for people who were not baptized; most, it was the possibility of Christianizing them that gave origin to charitable action. Catholic church was endowed with the notion of a common humanity that could and should be converted, thus giving a new sense to one of the spiritual works of mercy which consisted in teaching the ignorant in the religious sense of the latter word. Thus, all activities concerned with evangelization were regarded as ultimate acts of charity; Indians, for instance are often

5 categorized as "poor Indians" in travel accounts. Some authors have argued that the Protestant empires were less concerned with this kind of charity (converting natives). Evidence I came across suggests that they had equal concerns about converting, but they lacked the means to do it on a large scale. Without religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Capuchins or the classical Mendicant orders, everything the Dutch and English could do was to rely on independent missionaries and the ministers of their churches.

Hospitals are privileged institutions in the study of charity, chiefly because they were mostly concerned with the poor until the medicalization of care in the nineteenth century and secondly because their regulations are always very specific about the persons that should be let in and those who could not.

Let us look at the three different Catholic Empires: the Spanish, the Portuguese and French, the latter being designed to be Protestant free by Louis XIV, and thus to eliminate religious diversity in its coloniesix.

In the Spanish Empire, the need to build hospitals for American Indians had been felt since

Charles V and a law was issued in order to create them under the scope of the royal patronagex. According to the same purpose, synod constitutions of the new bishoprics always stressed the need to create hospitals in main settlements that would form a part of the devotional unit formed by the churchxi. Besides specific hospitals for the Indian population, hospitals for Spaniards or for the imported African population were created everywhere. These hospitals catered for different groups within Catholic populations: we can find specific hospitals for Indians, others for black slaves and others for Spanish natives or Creoles. We might say that the hospital became a typical feature of the Spanish Empire. Nearly 500 hundred hospitals have been surveyed in both Spanish America and the Philippines up to 1700; some of those had a short lived experience, but the remains of many of them survive to the present dayxii.

The hospitals designed for Indians, had the declared intention of saving their souls, although

Indians were supposed to pay a tribute for their maintenance. Some of them, as the two hospitals founded in Michoácan by Vasco de Quiroga, rather than hospitals in the modern sense of the word, were forms of settlement: they were to have buildings in the city attached to rural properties; Indians would work either as farmers or artisans in them. Such hospitals became loci designed to the Christian life that local populations were expected to leadxiii.

6 Hospitals in the Spanish American world were normally under the authority of the Ecclesiastical

Cabildo or religious orders. If the cabildo was to patronize them, they could have confraternities that performed all the tasks concerning the actual running of the hospital. Religious orders concerned with hospitals were the hospitaller brothers of St. John of God, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Mexico and

Peru even experienced the creation of two new hospitaller religious orders, the Betlamitas or the Saint

Hyppolitus Order of Charity, both of them based upon in the Augustinian rule. Behind the concern with the souls of the Indians, lay more pragmatic concerns: the Indians had been dying on account of epidemic diseases ever since the Spaniards arrived and the profits of the encomienda, based on per capita taxation, severely threatened. Thus, behind the creation of hospitals was also an attempt to cut the high indigenous mortality rates.

In Portugal, the majority of hospitals were run and owned by the Misericórdias, a set of autonomous confraternities obeying to similar rules and under royal patronage. These confraternities were supposed to perform all works of mercy and obey to a gendered notion of charity: their patron was Mary the mother of Christ, and mediator between sins and her holy son. The expression "advogada" (lawyer) of sins is often associated with her either in text, or visually. the iconography of the Misericórdias has the

Virgin of the cloak as its main icon. On result of this gender approach to charity, Misericórdias were often called as "mães de Misericórdia". The Misericórdias were responsible for the setting of social frontiers, between gender, class or ethnic groups. No women were to be members, and charity was a male activity in spite of the gendered notion of charity. Male brothers were to form part of the top local elites; within them, there would be a divide between first class noble members and non-noble (master craftsmen or merchants).

No Jews or tainted blood persons were to be admitted in the confraternity, as well as black, mulatto or other dark skin natives. Exclusive membership (although selection of members varied according to the particular place and time) was matched by selection criteria of the recipients of charity that also distinguished between gender, social status, religious beliefs and skin color. As a consequence, different hospitals were created according to the local ethnicities in presence and the way they related to one another. In Goa, there was an hospital for white men and another for non-slave Christianized natives whilst in Bahia, the local hospital admitted whites and slaves on equal standing, because the latter were priced

7 commodities central to the economy and the former were mainly unsuccessful emigrants from Portugal.

Hospitals for non-Christians existed only as part of conversion strategies: this explains why the Jesuits founded one in Goa and a look at Jesuit letters will leave no doubt about their religious purposes.

New France copied a specificity of hospital organization from the motherland: hospitals were run by hospitaller nunsxiv. In this feature we can detect the influence of Saint Vincent de Paul and his close cooperation with aristocratic Parisian women such as Louise de Marillac, which was to give origin to the tradition of female administration of hospitals. Canadian hospitaller nuns also came mostly from high class backgrounds and had servants to perform services for hospital patients. They operated in close cooperation

(not to say submission) with their Jesuit "partners" and had another impending task: the one of running local schools for women. There was a place for women in charity in the French territories, which let them out of domestic or strictly devotional convent life. So there was in the Dutch empire, as we shall see later on, but the contrast with Portugal and Spain is striking. Initially designed to be an outpost for the converting of local Indians, hospitals in New France soon turned to the colonial population, having as one of their main concerns the spiritual side of charity. Huguenots cared after in the hospital were supposed to renounce heresy and adhere to Catholicism. Whenever such conversions occurred nuns reported them to

Paris because this was central to the propaganda of their activitiesxv. In so doing, hospitaller nuns were agents of the triumph of Catholicism over heresy.

The important issue, though, is that none of these hospitals understood its duties as merely medical or restorative: all of them prescribed confession upon entrance, attendance of masses, sometimes prayers for benefactors and patrons, preparation to death by last rites with administration of sacraments and drawing of wills.

In the Protestant empires, the concern with interiorized religion, one that, according to contemporary authors, took more seriously a life according to religious precepts (because God would not forgive through confession) made Protestant authors mock Catholic efforts to Christianize blacks or nativesxvi. Travelers remarked the contrast between the eagerness of the Portuguese and Spanish in taking their slaves to the mass with them (even if they mocked their figure and behavior in church) and the contempt either the English or the Dutch devoted to the souls of Othersxvii. Thus, the Protestant colonists

8 seem to be less interested in producing "fake" Christians and it took a while before they acknowledged that

Catholicism could be a useful instrument in the avoidance of slave upheavalsxviii.

If we move to Protestant Empires, descriptions of hospitals in travel accounts become more rare; charity is less visible in discourse, and sources are more difficult to find.

In British territories organization of charity followed the parochial frame, as a result of the Poor

Laws, that made each community responsible for its poor, thereby limiting the creation of big institutions such as hospitals. The lesser visibility of charity in the British colonies lead to a denial of the existence of poverty in colonial times, that American historiography started to threaten only in the 1970's with the works of Gary Nash. Even so, authors generally claim that poverty in the colonies was far from reaching the high levels it attained in the metropolis. The parochial character of charity was so strong that sermons were written in order to persuade parishioners to give to other parishes in distress, as happened in Barbados in the 1730'sxix. In spite of the laws enforcing parochial relief of the poor, the suspicion is that organization of charity varied according to the churches the different religious communities attended. Being so, the

British territories in America are so far the only ones where we can find religious diversity among

Christians: Lutherans (where there were Scandinavian emigrants), Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and

Quakersxx. The obsession of seventeenth century texts of propaganda that tried to recruit colonizers emphasized the absence of beggars in the British colonies in an era when London was famous for its beggars, vagrants and criminalsxxi. Provision of work became central in the fight against beggary; laws of settlement enabled the warning out of vagrants; hospitals and workhouses were few in number until the second half of the eighteenth centuryxxii. Equally in this century, the spread of charity schools in North

America testifies the centrality of literacy in the Protestant churches, where reading was essential as a means to endow the person with the possibility of reading the Bible on his or her own.

In the Dutch Empire, charity was established according to the Reformed Church instructions and thus influenced by the Institutes of Christian religion by Calvinxxiii. Strictly based on a theocratic understanding of society, the overseers of the poor were supposed to look after the poor that belonged to the Reformed community. As the Dutch lacked the means to incorporate native populations in their church by religious proselytism, charity seems to be less concerned with alterity. Even back in Holland there was a

9 debate between civic authorities and religious ones on whom charity should help: whilst the former understood community as extended to the local residents in a given territory, Reformed Church members restricted their duty to help only people of their own church. This exclusion of non-members contradicted

Calvinist doctrine, which embraced a wide ranging notion of charity; but, also according to Calvin, no one could save himself and much the less others. Faith was a superior virtue to charity; and salvation was beyond the individuals good works.

Hospitals in Holland were renown for their good maintenance and administration and for the good treatment of inmates; several traveler accounts depict them in praisexxiv. Recent historiography has also emphasized the pride the Dutch took in their hospitals, orphanages, and a book has been written on their role in the patronizing of the artsxxv. One of the most striking features of charitable organization was the role women could play as regents, often in collaboration with their husbands.

The French traveler Tavernier would remark the Dutch did not bother to take their slaves to church and the first thing he would say about charitable institutions in Dutch overseas possessions, namely those in Batavia, is that they did not look like those at home at all.

Batavia was a commercial city that included the headquarters of the Company, an enormous

Chinese population and the local Javanese among other ethnic groupsxxvi. Several Dutch institutions of charity were to be found in the city. There was a hospital for the sick and wounded (in this case to cater for the employees of the Company); a workhouse for dishonored women; a hospital for orphaned children and one small out of town hospital for contagious diseases; the Chinese population had its own hospital. Visits to the poor on their homes must have been reserved for the church overseers of the poor.

The Dutch hospital in Batavia, which catered exclusively for sailors and soldiers of the East India

Company, is described by Tavernier as a place where the sick were poorly treated and had to rely on the friends who visited them for help. It had women and men working as family teams in its administration just like in Holland and slaves to do the hard work (like most hospitals in the Western Empires). But no mention is made of religious duties of inmates or spiritual comfort addressed to themxxvii. Once again, women performed a role as assistants to their male partners in tasks strongly associated with gender such as overseeing the kitchen or linen while their husbands were to keep account books and take care of

10 inspectors. Nevertheless women's duties were purely logistic and not religious as in the case of the French nuns.

Instead, in Dutch agricultural settlements such us the Cape of Good Hope, the organization of charity seems to have followed mainly the Calvinist model. There was only one hospital and the Reformed church parish, with its overseers of the poor, seems to have been the main organizational device of charity, once again presumably excluding the non-Dutch populationxxviii.

My intuition is that the number and size of the implemented charitable services always made a distinction between the European born colonists, Creoles, christianized and non-christianized populations.

Where there were large "incorporated" alien populations (slaves, natives, mixed races) through religious conversion, the discourse of charity tended to be encompassing, although its practices were far from embracing all the individuals with the same concerns. Where less successful efforts were undertaken in order to convert the native population, charity tended to be restricted to colonists and to be less visible, unless there was a significant "minority" in political terms, as was the case with the Batavian Chinese. This does not mean that the Protestant did not consider seriously their role in propagating the Christian church, but without religious orders, everything they could do was to export a few predikants that did not have a serious impact on the numbers of the converted. So, they did not lack the intention but the means to convert; Spanish hospitals or the Portuguese Misericórdias would not be possible in any of the Protestant empires. Calvinist faith, for instance, mixed an encompassing idea of humanity with the conviction of the depravity of men. In practice, some Dutch would scorn at the idea of converting natives. In other words, charity did not play the same roles in all the empires: although it was always more concerned with colonists than any other population, the scope of its practices was always influenced by the ideas of community they had in mind and their actual ability to perform them. i Froger, François, A relation of a voyage made in the years 1695, 1696, 1697: on the coasts of Africa, streights of Magellan, Brasil, Cayenna, and the Antilles, by a squadron of French men of war, under the command of M. de Gennes, London, M. Gillyflower, 1698, p. 120 (emphasis mine), examples illustrated on p. 121. ii Lindberg, Carter, Beyond Charity. Reformation initiatives for the poor, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1993; Grell, Ole Peter, 'The Protestant imperative of Christian care and neighbourly love', in Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe 1500-1700, London, 1997, pp. 43-65. Davis, Natalie Zemon, "Poor Relief, Humanism and Heresy: The Case of Lyon", Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, vol. 5, 1968, pp. 217-275; Pullan, Brian, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice, Oxford, Blackwell, 1971.

11 iii Critchow, Donald T. and Parker, Charles H.,With Us Always. A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998. iv The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant translated into rhyming couplets with introduction and commentary by Edwin H. Zeydel with reproductions of original woodcuts, New York, Columbia University Press, 1944, p. 23. On false beggars, see chapter 63, pp. 208-211. v The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars: with a vocabulary of their language edited by Martin Luther in the year 1528 now first translated into English, with Introduction and Notes by John Camden Hotten, London, John Camden Hotten, 1860, p. 3. vi Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Grand Rapids, WM. B. Berdmans, 1962, vol I, p. 359: "But I say that the whole human race, without exception, are to be embraced with one feeling of charity: that there is no distincion of Greek or Barbarian, worthy or unworthy, friend or foe, since all are to be viewed not in themselves, but in God. [……] Let a man be what he may, he is still to be loved, because God is loved". Other references to charity are to be found in vol. 1, p. 505, vol. II, pp. 10-13. On justification by faith alone, see vol. II, 126-127. vii Parker, Charles H., "Poor Relief and Community in the Early Dutch Republic" in Critchow, Donald T. and Parker, Charles H.,With Us Always. A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998, pp. 13-33 and also Norberb, Kathryn, "Religious Charity and Cultural Norms in Counter-Reformation France”, in the same volume, pp. 35-54. For the fragmentation of charity according to different religious communities see also Israel, Jonathan I., The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 353-360. viii Obra nuevamente compuesta, en la cual se cuenta la felice victoria que Dios por su infinita bondad y misericordia, fue servido de dar, al illustre Señor Pedro Melendez, Almirante y Capitan de la governacion de la mar, de las Indias, y adelãtado de la Florida. Contra Ivan Ribao de nacion frances. Con otros mil Luteranos, a los quales passo à filo de espada, cõ otras curiosidades que pone el auctor, de las viviendas de los Indios dela Florida, y sus naturales sayciones. Cõpuesta en verso Castellano, por Bartholome de Flores, natural de Malaga y vezino de Cordova, Sevilla, Hernando Diaz, 1571. ix See Eccles, W. J., "El rol de la Iglesia en Nueva Francia", in La sociedad canadense bajo el regimen frances ed. by Carlos A. Mayo, Rosario, Argentina, Biblioteca Norte Sur, 1995, pp. 147-164. x Charles V ordered in October 1541 that hospitals should be found in every Indian pueblo (Law 1, tit. 4, lib. 1). Quoted in prologue of Constituciones y ordenanzas, para el regimen, y govierno del Hospital Real, y General de los Indios de esta Nueva España, Mandadas guardar por S. M. en Real Cédula de 27 de Octubre del año de 1776. Impresas en México, en la nueva Oficina Madrileña de D. Felipe de Zúñiga y Ontiveros, calle de la Palma, año de 1778, no pagination. xi Compendio y sumario de los synodos de los años de ochenta y dos, ochenta y quatro y ochenta y cinco, ochenta y seys e ochenta y ocho, noventa noventa (sic) y dos y noventa y quatro hecho en este synodo y constituciones synodales dell Illo sr Don Toribio Alphonso Mogrovejo Arcobispo de los Reyes començadas el dia de Sant Crysogono martyr veynte y quatro de noviembre del Ano de noventa y seys en la Provincia de Guambos, y acabadas, y publicadas en ocho de henero de este presente año de mil y quinientos, y noventa y ocho años en el pueblo de Guaraz, cap. 34, p. 17. Ordenanças del Illustrissimo y Reverendissimo Señor D. Fr. Marcos Ramirez de Prado, del Consejo de Su Magestad, Obispo de Mechoacan; para los Curas, Beneficiados, y Vicarios de toda su Diocesi, Mexico, 1657, p. 10; Constituciones synodales, del Obispado de Veneçuela, y Santiago de Leon de Caracas. Hechars en la Santa Iglesia Cathedral de dicha Ciudad de Caracas, en el Año del Señor de 1687. Por el ilustrissimo, y Reverendissimo Señor Doctor Don Diego de Baños, y Sotomayor, Obispo del dicho Obispado, del Consejo de Su Magestad, su Predicador, y Capellàn de Honor, &c y aprobadas por la Magestad del Señor Rey Don Carlos Segundo, Año de 1698. Impressas em Madrid: En la Imprenta del Reyno, "De los Hospitales", Lib. 4, tit. IX, pp. 296-299; Constituciones del arçobispado y provincia dela muy ynsigne y muy leal ciudad de Tenuxtitlã Mexico dela Nueva España, ... y Servicio de Dios mãdo e muy Illustre y rever~edissimo Señor Dõfray Allõso & Mõtufar arçobispo desta dicha sãnta yglesia de Mexico imprimir estas cõstituciones signodales. Las quales fueron acabadas y imprimidas por Juã Pablos lõbardo, pmer impressor enesta grãde, insigne y muy leal ciudad de Mexico a diez dias de hebrero. Año dela encarnacion dde nuestro señor Jesu Xpo de M.d.lvi [1556] anõs, chapters 10 and 73. xii Guerra, Francisco, El hospital en Hispanoamerica y Filipinas 1492-1898, Madrid, Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1994. xiii "Reglas, y ordenanzas para el gobierno de los Hospitales de Santa Fé de Mexico, y Michoacan, dispuestas por su fundador el Rmo. y Venerable Sr. D. Vasco de Quiroga, primer bispo de Michoacan..." in

12

Don Vasco de Quiroga. Documentos. Biografía de Juan José Moreno, Ordenanzas de los Hospitales, Testamento, Información en Derecho, Juicio de Residencia, Litigio por la Isla de Tultepec. Introcción y Notas Críticas por Rafael Aguayo Spencer, Mexico, 1939, pp. 247-287. xiv Magnuson, Roger, Education in New France, Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992, pp. 58-59, 152; Gelfand, Toby, "Medicine in New France" in Numbers, Ronald, Medicine in the New World. New Spain, New France, and New England, Knoxville, The University of Tenessee Press, 1987, pp. 64-100. xv "Lettre de la R. Mere Superieure des Religieuses Hospitalieres de Kebec en la Nouvelle France. Du 23 Octobre 1665" in Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la nouvelle France, les annés 1664 et 1665. Envoyée au R. P. Provincial de la Province de France. À Paris, chez Sébastien Cramoisy & Sébastien Mabre- Cramoisy, 1666, p. 8; "Lettre de la Reverende Mere Superieure des Religieuses Hospitalieres de Kebec en la Nouvelle France. Du 20 Octobre 1667" in Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable aux missions des peres de la Compagie de Jesus. En la nouvelle France, les annés mil six cens soixante six, & mil six cens soixante sept. Envoyée au R. P. Jacques Bordier Provincial de la Province de France. À Paris, chez Sébastien Cramoisy & Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1668, p. 7-9. xvi It is one of the pervading subtexts of the work of Thomas Gage, The English-American his travail by sea and land: or, a new survey of the West-Indias...., London, R. Cotes, 1648; xvii Mocquet, Jean, Voyages en Afrique, Asie, Indes Orientales & Occidentales.... A Rouen, chez Jacques Caillove dans la Cour du Palais, 1645, p. 337; Pouchot de Chantassin, Claude Michel, Relation d'un voyage et retour des Indes Orientales, pendant les années 1690 & 1691, par un garde de la marine..., Paris, chez la veuve Coignard, 1692, pp. 26-28. On the Dutch see Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Recueil de plusieurs relations et traitez singuliers et curieux de J. B. Tavernier, escuyer, Baron d'Aubonne, qui n'ont point este mis dans ses six premiers voyages..., Paris, Gervais Clouzier, 1679. See "Partie V. Histoire de la conduite des hollandois en Asie Cap. IV - Du peu de zele des Hollandois pour l'avancement du christianisme aus Indes; du mauvais ordre de leurs Hospitaux; & de leur défaut de charité", pp. 23-38. xviii Burke, Edmond, An Account of the European Settlements in America. In six parts, 2 vols., London, J. Dodsley, 1777, pp. 240-241: "And certainly, with all their faults, in one respect their zeal is highly recommendable; that they are the cause of several charitable foundations; and that they bring the Indians and blacks into some knowledge of religion, and in some measure mitigate their slavery. This too has a great political effect; for those slaves are more faithful than ours, and, though indulged with greater liberty, are far less dangerous." Before (p. 240) he had talked about "nechanical methods of devotion". xix Atkins, John, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies; in His Majesty's Ships, the Swallow and Weymouth .... by John Atkins, surgeon in the Royal Navy, London, printed for Caesar Ward & Richard Chandler, 1735, pp. 210-215. xx Josselyn, John, An Account of two voyages to New-England..., 2nd edition, London, Gilles Widdowes, 1675, pp. 179-180; Thomas, Gabriel, An Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pensilvania and of Wet-New-Jersey in America..., London, A. Baldwin, 1698, pp. 52-54. On the religious fragmentation of New England see also Greene, Jack P., Pursuits of Hapiness. The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture, Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina Press, 1988, pp. 58-59. xxi Recit de l'estat present des celebres colonies de la Virginie, de Marie-Land, du nouveau duché d'York, de Penn-Sylvania, & de la Nouvelle Angleterre, etc..., Rotterdam, Chez Reinier Leers, 1681, p. 34; xxii Christianson, Eric H., "Medicine in New England" in Numbers, Ronald, Medicine in the New World. New Spain, New France, and New England, Knowville, The University of Tenessee Press, 1987, pp. 101- 153. xxiii On the relationship between the East and West India Companies and the Dutch Reformed Church see Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800 London, Hutchinson & Co, 1965, pp. 132-154. xxiv See Mandeslo, Johann Albrecht von, Voyages celebres et remarquables, faites de Perse aux Indes Orientales ..., Amsterdam, chez Michel Charles le Cene, 1727 [1658], pp. 806-807. xxv Schama, Simon, The Embarassment of Riches. An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, New York, Vintage Books, 1987, pp. 575-576; Israel, Jonathan I., The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 355. Muller, Sheila D., Charity in the Dutch Republic. Pictures of Rich and Poor for Charitable Institutions, Ann Arbor, UMI Press, 1982. xxvi For a excellent description of Batavia and its hospitals in the 1660's see Nieuhoff, John, "Voyages and Travels into Brasil and the East-Indies, containing an exact description of the Dutch Brasil and divers parts of the East-Indies ..., translated from the Dutch original" in [Churchill Collection], A Collection of voyages

13 and travels, some now first printed from Original Manuscripts. Others translated out of foreign languages..., 4 vols., vol II, London, Printed for Awsham and John Churchill, 1704, pp. 302-321. xxvii See Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, op. cit., pp. 23-38. xxviiiA new general collection of voyages and travels: consisting of the most esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language: comprehending everything remarkable in its kind, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America ...., vol. 3, London, Printed for Thomas Astley, 1745-47, pp. 324-345. On the Dutch occupation of the Cape of Good Hope see Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600- 1800, London, Hutchinson & Co., 1965, pp. 242-267.

14